Alpha Female….

I was asked if I am an alpha female type?  I think I am more of a unique type, but is there such a thing as “alpha” or “beta” female/male?  Then there are type A and type B personality…. So many that the psychologist made up.   I don’t like being stereotyped.  I just feel I don’t fit in any certain labeled group.  I may carry certain traits of an “alpha female”, certain “beta”, and some “omega”, and anything in between.

So I looked up for what alpha female is made up of, by definition.   Alpha can be bossy or dominant?  That’s not necessary.  I am nurturing, radiate warmth, cool and calm.  I know what I want. It takes a right attitude and a balance act to be a right kind of alpha.  The kind that is so comfortable with themselves that they don’t have to boss people around and don’t have to play mind-games or ego-trips to maintain their alpha status.   Life experience may have developed certain common traits in women/men.  I think it I can agree with some traits….

traits

Alpha females are intelligent , independent, and happy. They do not have their feathers ruffled to easy, they don’t slander others, and they are comfortable in their own skin. They attract the right type of people into their life, and are generally successful. An alpha female knows how to be confident, not cocky. She expresses what is on her mind, with grace. An alpha female is on the top of her game, and everyone else’s. It is hard to fool an alpha female.

She is someone that can handle herself in any given situation, and knows how to mix compassion into her life, without being weak. She is a true leader. A woman of her word. An alpha female will not break under pressure, and because of her psychological strength, she is often the one others go to for advice and support. She doesn’t talk in an awful manner about others. An alpha female is wise beyond her years. An alpha female is true to her friends, and true to herself.

She is well mannered,at peace with her life, and very independent. She has pride, and she is happy with herself.

If you know an alpha female, be glad you met her. Alpha females as friends are true. An alpha female has a bond that lasts in thick, and thin. An alpha female will never betray someone that is close to them. Alpha females are rare, strong, graceful ladies.

An alpha will excel in a business where she has total control, can flip the switch to turn it up or down when she wants, and has a small legion of devoted employees.  Too many employees makes it possible for a coup.  You know how alphas get!  She’ll blossom where the limelight is on her and she can be seen as a star, if even for a night.  Most of the businesses listed below will enhance or work with one of her stronger attributes.  This is mostly for fun, but each business is fully capable of being run by someone else.  It’s just that the alpha always brings a little more dazzle.

C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E

The test result says “I am an alpha female”.  Interesting.

Are women and men necessarily as different as Venus and Mars?  Not necessarily; I think I like the writing at http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/8168/alpha-male-beta-female-which-one-are-you/.  In recent mass-market fiction, even Alpha heroes are required to develop modern-day Beta characteristics, like heightened sensitivity and emotions, thanks to the influence of the female heroine in the novel who ‘tames’ her man. But it isn’t always the case in the real world, such as in the case of a high powered modern woman who doesn’t need ‘rescuing.’ For her, Prince Charming may very well appear in the form of a relaxed Gamma, prepared to take the back seat or even be a stay-at-home dad in her castle.

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“Indigestible dinner”

I just happened to read this quote

“In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.” – Mignon McLaughlin.

Wait a minute, “swallow” – who made you to swallow? You don’t have to swallow! You can spit it out if it’s disgust tasting. Isn’t that a waste to dine out at a lavish restaurant for some weird indigestible foods?
If a dinner is with indigestible stuff, I would rather not have that dinner.
The bottom line, you just don’t have to swallow any stuff that you don’t see yourself digesting. Just observe a baby spitting up the foods, you’ll see this very clearly. True to themselves, aren’t they? Babies do teach us a lot, don’t they?
Therefore we have other quotes, “Life is all about choices” or “The choice you make is the life you take”.
If we can (and yes, we can!) consciouly choose to have a more pleasant tasting dinner, that will make our lives easy.
There’s one line in an 80’s song “if it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so so sad”. I think it also works in the opposite way, “if it makes you so sad, then why the hell are you happy”. How could you live such a pretentious life?
You can make change at any time, and it’s smart to change before it’s too late, before your mentality and healthsake are compromised.
By consistenly applying this analogy in all aspects of our lives, we will have achieved a balanced, satisfied life full of vitality.

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Koinophilia – the love of average

Intrigued when reading Dr E. Funk’s philosophy, I am researching on this new terminology “koinophilia” and here I found the modern poem:

Koinophilia
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder;
it’s in the eyes of a hundred beholders.
Helen’s face did not launch a thousand ships,
but the thousand faces of Helen can launch any ship.
Beauty is a regression to the mean,
the line that cuts a bell curve into symmetrical halves.
Koinophilia,
the true answer given by the magic mirror
when it was asked, “Who is the fairest of them all?”
To behold Helen, to dream of Snow White,
use your mouse.
Drag a thousand noses, eyes, chins, and cheeks
across the computer screen,
and stack them in virtual layers,
then click on the merge icon.
There before you is the statistical average,
a face of uncommon beauty.
Beauty is the algorithm of the mundane.
If beauty is truth, then truth is as common
as the collective mother smiling down
lovingly at her collective infant’s face.
by Richard Fein

As the topic that led to this poem was about face and beauty, I can’t agree more with the author’s point of view:

… what defines beauty. Sir Francis Bacon said that beauty is harmony. Or, beauty is identified when different aspects of the face are in harmony, or in proportion with one another.
Others say that beauty is symmetry. However, studies show that the face has asymmetries in 95 percent of people. If one looks closely enough, he or she will notice that there are many beautiful faces with any number of asymmetries.
Lastly, people have been quoted stating that they cannot define beauty, but that they know it when they see it.
Dr. Funk feels that we cannot define beauty because it is always changing, particularly in the face. Our society today has accepted that beauty is found in all cultures and races.
Fifty years ago, we would have never seen Lucy Liu, Beyoncé, or Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Vogue or voted as People magazine’s most beautiful people. But, they are all beautiful women.
This is defined as koinophilia, or a love of the average. It is an average of all these different facial features that has become the allure to the human eye. Beauty is always changing because we as people are changing. Our perceptions and acceptance of beauty within different cultures are constantly changing which leads to a continually shifting idea of what defines beauty itself.

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Life’s a mission

One month since my last post, I am finding myself in the mood for writing again. April was a busy month with mainly family-related matters, as it turned out.
After finishing up work-related projects, I found myself travelling to California attending my cousin’s funeral. He had passed after 1 year of struggling with lung cancer, was survived by a beautiful wife and three young kids. She (his wife) wore an exhausted look, but was so strong. So were the kids. Parallel to that, re-visiting other relatives in the west coast was a refreshing and renewal event.
Back home in Texas, it was Mom’s birthday and the brother was home. At the same time going on was the community event at Vietnam Temple.
The other relative in town needed help with attending his kids as his wife was in Vietnam visiting her ill father. I was relieved that he’s recovered well after the surgey. Hope the thing in his brain is going away, by some magical power…
It seems that I am a “girl on mission” (someone has viewed me coming across as that).
As always, when May is here, I am nervous as I am afraid of losing summer time. I always have that feeling that summer will run out on me. For years, I have made it a yearly mission for me to celebrate Summer beginning (Memorial weekend) and Summer ending (Labor Day weekend).
Social life-wise, I believed in giving the best shot in whatever I do and while I am at it. I gave it 6 months since I started opening up my horizon… It’s weird that things just started picking up. There are things in life that happen when you least expect. I believe that is also my case, when the timing is right. It could be also some kind of message that I have paid enough attention to and listened to… A powerful message or a strong feeling?
Over the years, with lessons learned and time so precious, I have narrowed down the list of my preferences, at the same time resorted to all possibilities. There are men who impressively reads/understands me well in the very first place without a question in mind, and the number of them is small. Then of whom there are those who communicate their thoughts well, some don’t. Some with fascinating mind. Others with mysteries… for me to discover, hm? It is quite a challenge, but I gain many interesting perspectives indeed. It’s an insanely crazy world when everyone is looking for someone and is so skeptical and/or so cautious at the same time…
A quote has this, “those of us who listen and follow the messages that life offers live closest to our destiny and have the best lives.” How Life’s destiny and purpose merged, what Life offers next – I am curious and excited to see …

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The Year of Tiger – Change is in the air

Sunday – the beginning day of the year of Tiger and also Valentine’s day. It was a productive day for me.
I did a good workout today after 3 weeks of lagging-off, went to join this group (no name yet) to release birds, crickets, turtles, and fish ( they try to make it happen every Sunday), and made it to two meetings today.
The tradition says you don’t want to do too much on the first day as you’ll end up doing or working hard throughout the year. Well, that is not a problem for me. I have to work anyway. There are seasons for work, and there are vacation days. For some downtime to retreat myself if I feel the need, I can just get some days off to break away or to become idle from doing anything. Sometimes routine can tire me out. And changing routines does help me to get my mind freshened up and re-energized. Over the years my list has always started with family, and then career. I’ve learned to love myself and listen to my body. Sometimes you have to be selfish, in order to be self-less… and to learn more about my true self. Resorting my to-do list (for near and far future) , I realized I did not start my New Year’s resolutions until today. I also noticed I don’t wish everybody “Happy V-day” anymore. I focused more on the traditional Lunar New Year’s Day. I guess I meant to no longer believe in the “labeled” day. To me love should be celebrated all year round. I wish everyone with love, luck, blessings, and longevity as always, and never jot down the word “prosperity” when it comes to family members or loved ones.
The year of Tiger will be amazing. So far I feel it’s going to be an energetic year for me. My ultimate personal goal is not yet met … hopefully soon. Besides work less and more travel, there are other activities I want to do, but it also depends on how much load I will have, such as joining some social clubs, taking some Latin dancing lessons (salsa, meringue, …) for the purpose of just getting out and meeting people. The bottom line is, keep my body in good shape. Life is too short and there’s a lot of things I still miss out, or I want to be a part of.
Will see what’s in it for me. I’ll just embrace it.
There are so many sources telling all the things about “Tiger” but the following links are a few good ones:
2010 Year of the Tiger – Love this link for all things related to ‘tiger’
Year of the Tiger 2010
Dr Mao with some good common senses
And the song “Eye of the tiger” as well….

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Synthesis vs. Analysis

I have gained a new perspective from reading this comment posted at AnswerBag. What led me to this page was a triggering comment by a guy friend yesterday, about “women are complicated” (from his experience, I confirmed). I could analyze on and on, I would or may never get what he had in mind. I could have a bunch of questions for him to answer, but then I would become so aggressive or opinionated. Good or bad?
Well, I am very convinced by this excerpt that sometimes instead of analyzing we’d just accept the facts or be aware of the happenings. A kid in me always wants me to ask why, ponder into the reasons behind certain incidents. But over the years, I’ve learned to accept the answers, to just be aware of the facts to what happened, not to ask why too much. Awareness refers to knowing or finding out the why, the what, it takes some problem solving (again, analytical) skills, I believe, and then we have to understand that is the how of the matter. The final picture is what we hold as a lesson or just an acknowledgment. And now I find the word for this process, “synthesis”.

Complicated and simple are actually two sides of the same coin: in order to see complexity, you have to have the notion of simplicity, and vice-versa. So neither complexity NOR simplicity have any independent reality of their own.

But so what? That’s not really what we humans are concerned about when this question comes up, is it? What we want to really know is “why am I confused, and how can I know what’s important and what to focus on?” There’s an anxiety associated with this sense that life is so complex that it’s pulling us in many directions at once and we can’t get “centered”.

There are two opposite capacities that we have as humans: analysis and synthesis. Analysis is based in the mind’s ability to separate things from each other: to form concepts, draw boundaries, build models of relationships, etc. This discriminative ability is what makes life look complicated: WE chop reality up into lots of little pieces and study them in isolation, and the number of such pieces we can create is actually infinite.

So if we ONLY have analysis running (without any synthesis), we end up with a distressingly LARGE supply of pieces to study.

Synthesis is different: synthesis puts pieces together into larger wholes. Most of us are not nearly as good at synthesis as we are at analysis, but many of us can do it well in specific areas: someone who has really “mastered” an art form, craft, or sport is practicing synthesis — they have “become one” with their chosen discipline, creating a synthesis in which “self and paint”, or “self and instrument”, or “self and ball” have ceased to be two completely separate things, and have merged into a larger whole.

From the outside, such a synthesis may look like magic, and in a way it is. But it’s more valuable to see the deeper process at work: the collecting of bits and pieces and restoring their original wholeness, prior to discrimination / separation — that’s what resolves our anxiety about complexity.

So why does THIS explanation sound so complicated? Because the mind which analyzes wants to cling to thorough explanations, and having such an explanation helps it to relax a bit. What we’re really talking about in practical terms is learning to be aware (synthesis) instead of continuing to focus on thinking (analysis).

Awareness is synthesis: if you want life to be simpler, without going down some strange tunnel like throwing out 90% of your stuff, learn to be more aware. That will solve the life-is-complicated problem where it really matters.

I used to have this saying “Life is complicated already. Simplify it.” Since I’ve practiced awareness and synthesized all that life has offered, yes, “life is short. Life has its own meaningful seasons”.
Next time I would just say “That is so her”. Or, “that is just him”. The choice we make, the life we take. We can choose to accept him/her, but can’t change who he/she is.
On a Christian TV station, the hostess always says bye with “Life is fragile. Take care of each other.”
So, using the opening sentence I can conclude it in this quote: “Complicated and simple are actually two sides of the same coin – the key is you can flip your coin.”

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How to make time for self or significant other

This post is to correspond to the article at Resources.

When people get busy, hurried, and stressed they put aside
their own needs and the needs of their relationships in the
rush to get thing done. But when you are busy, hurried and
stressed is when you need time for yourself and with your loved
one(s) the most. Time and space nourish you, and allow you to be
more effective – and being more effective means you get things
done better and faster.

This is counterintuitive. Just when you think you have
absolutely no time for yourself or your relationships (family or
significant other), is when you should take the time in order to
be more effective. Think of time you spend on yourself and on
your relationships as time spent charging up your body and
spirit.

How do you carve out that time? Here are a few suggestions to
help you out.
1. You don’t have to do everything you have to do
Sometimes people who feel overwhelmed want to do everything on
their list as a way to relieve the pressure. This will not work
because you simply will not get everything on your list done-
and, if you came close, the list would start filling up again
with additional must-do tasks.
What do you really have to do? Be as clear about this as you
would be if you were advising a friend: only a few things on
that list are really in the “must do” category. Erase the rest,
forgive yourself for not doing those other things, and spend the
freed-up time on yourself or your loved one(s).

2. Simplify
Look carefully at the items on your list that involve a lot of
steps or look like they will take a lot of time. If they really
must be done right now, is there a way to do them more simply,
more directly? Think about your experience with complex
projects, and how they often seem to double in complexity and in
the time required as unexpected problems crop up or extra steps
have to be added.
This may be the time to go for a “good enough” result, rather
than a perfect one. Opt for simplicity and ease: it’s ok not to
struggle. Use the freed-up time to spend on yourself or your
loved one(s).

3. Set a realistic to-do list for the day; stop when it’s done
If you work for someone else, your boss only gets to tell you
what to do during the hours he or she has paid for. Beyond that,
if there is any justice in your work world, someone else has to
do the things that you could not get to, or they have to wait.

Try this experiment: pretend that your to-do list has hired you
for a certain number of hours each day. Work your hardest for
your to-do boss in the time you have agreed on. And then stop
for the day: enough is enough. You may need to pare down your
idea of what you can reasonably accomplish in a day.

4. Take care of yourself
Do one (or more) self-care actions each morning. This can be
vastly different for different people: from a 10 minute
meditation to a short walk, to making sure you have some quiet
time even if you have to get up 15 minutes early, to using a
special body-care product, to applying moisturizer to your face,
to making a special cup of tea or coffee before you run out the
door. Do something easy, fast, and special to recharge your
batteries and let you know you are important.
You will then find it easier to make better choices throughout
the day, having been recharged a bit by your self-care action.
You will be more likely, later in the day, to make wise
decisions about making time for yourself and your loved one(s)
instead of doing more stuff.

5. Set a drop to-do list time, before you drop from exhaustion
Set a time every day when you will stop everything you are
doing to give yourself some space and time or spend time with
your loved one(s). Make sure this is a time long before you drop
from exhaustion. If you tend to pass out at 9 pm, make sure your
alone or together time starts no later then 8:30. Better yet,
make it 8 pm.
Alternatively, decide on a time that works best in your
schedule and stop for half an hour to an hour in the middle of
the day or early evening to spend time on yourself or on your
loved one(s).

6. Refuel with love
It seems impossible during a busy period to carve out any time
at all for yourself or for a loved one. But you can and you
really should. We all know people function better on adequate
sleep. But do you know that people function better on adequate
love?
When you are spending time on yourself you are loving yourself.
This self-love will nourish you and make you more effective.
When you are spending time on loved one(s) you are allowing
yourself to be nourished by them/him/her and that will make you
more effective as well.

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Music – my passion

Growing up as a kid I loved listening to all kinds of music. I was not exposed to any musical environment. Mom was too busy earning bread for us to think about having any of us taking musical class. Plus, she believes in education, education, and education. The next door neighbor in Nhatrang had radio. I listened to whatever they listened. The morning BBC at the time broadcast from overseas allowed me to learn some Vietnamese songs, old and new at the time. I remember me writing down the songs I overheard from their radio. There were afternoon sing-a-song teaching program for children, foreign music request program every Sunday morning. So I collected all songs in my mind and/or jotted them down into a notebook, and learned different songs by Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bonney M, Modern Talking, Wham, ABBA, Julio Iglesias, even some french songs. I learned to sing along and then sing to my younger siblings, especially my younger sister who asked me to sing for her noonnap. Later on, living in Bien Hoa, Mom bought us radio-double cassette system and TV. I had more interest in tuning into different stations. I was into the classics station and would have it on to put me to sleep at night. The cassette musical tapes I had were given by the seller, and I listened to them over and over again until I transferred them to a longer ribboned tape (90 min) and overwrote the tape with my favorite songs from the radio stations. I loved the beats of the music and started picking up some ballroom-dance steps from a girl-friend (Phuong Thao). Speaking of Thao, she is an artist herself; she could draw very well. So, I went to sleep with classics and woke up in the morning dancing to the “beats”. I exercised, practiced the be-pop and cha-cha in the mornings. My mom and sister still talk jokingly about me “sweeping the floor in the morning”. I realized that was the beginning of what put me into the beats and into body shaping, and it did indeed help building some gestures into me. Then I got into music-exchange with school friends. Of course, these were the Vietnamese musical notes or songs made before 1975, which at the time was banned because they were considered by Vietnamese Communist as “nhac nguy doi truy” (addictive, non-patriotic, brain-washing music).
I could sing well. The age of karaoke in the 90’s proved that. Sometimes my mom and sisters encouraged me to participate into the contests. I did think about that; but I never felt a need to do such a thing, or to become a singer. I did sing at New Year’s celebration or cultural events. I am not timid. I enjoyed doing karaoke with friends, and yes, they called me singer or “ca si Yen-Nhi”. One thing I learned about myself is I like strong-willed or strong-spirited music, while most of Vietnamese music is so sad; they were all about one person departing, broken-hearted girls singing out for love. That is not what I would do on stage. So I’d rather choose the music of youth or young romance, of nationalism, of nature to sing. In other words, the songs I perform have to be meaningful to me. I admit music is in my blood. My maternal grandfather with his years of  playing french horn for french military had an influence on my musical talent. He taught me the musical keys. My father was active in community, was a soccer coach, played tennis when he was young, and had good voice. He loved singing to songs and to poems. I see I am a copy of him in that aspect sometimes. I am a truth seeker, as somebody says that to me. To really know the what and the how of music, I inquired more on how to appreciate music and arts, how to play piped organ (the one that is as high as the church building and requires you play with feet and hands), and tried to learn playing flute but my lungs are too weak. I ordered a brand-name $200-clarinet for that class, and unfortunately returned it after three months.
Years went by with my my own evolution, I turned to music when I need to relax. I guess my passion varies. The same with music. I changed taste from time to time. I guess, it does that to everybody, throughout different stages of their lives. But I can always go back to the roots. I can see myself confident when presenting myself or conducting my manner. I think that is part of what built me up as a person today. I see myself as a contributor, rather than an attention-grabber.

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“Youth Knows No Pain”

As I am watching “Youth Knows no Pain” on HBO-E, I am triggered by a doctor’s question “What’s your feeling anout the anti-aging industry?”
I feel it is going over-board. So many people, doctors of all kinds, facialists, skin technicians and alike, are getting into this business. And so many young people are attracted into this beauty-fixer upper industry for their obsession of being beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I am attracted to pretty things as well, probably in two ways: out of curiosity and admiration. I admire beauty that is highly self-maintained through natural nourishment and trained through hard-core disciplinary acts.
I believe we are in the age-conscious era. We human beings have evolved from being conscious about what we intake to what is good for your body, your brain, and the most ultimate desire is stay young longer, (if not forever). So does Youth knows any pain? Of course, it does, depending on how we take “that pain”. No pain, no gain. Not happy about one aspect of your face, your body? We have to weigh on the pain if it’s worth it for the gain we want. The pain from the knife, from exercise or disciplinary actions. It is all up to us. Agreed for those who have limit physical capability have to choose the knife-pain. But then you have to maintain, to keep it up. I believe in no pain no gain. I listen to my body, and eat, sleep, relaxt, workout equally and moderately. I don’t really need to go far out of my way or my limitations.
I am in my thirty’s and no one can’t believe my real age. A plastic surgeon friend once said I look like twenty-something. God bless him! We all know it takes as double work for women as it does for men as part of aging process. Women stretch, expand, shrink, sag, wrinkle, lose bone density due to menses and giving childbirths. Men go bald, age later, sag a little bit, but most likely expand. Then it would be sad if men can’t keep up and can’t maintain. The key is “maintain”.
The worst mistake is to be like someone. As we grow and learn from mistakes, own experiences, we know more about ourselff. I have learn to love myself better, know what I want, what does and would make me happy, what stands out from my body, my face. To me, being healthy, in control of your life, and being strong are what boost the condidence and self-esteem, which then boost the beauty.

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Human Imagination. How Powerful!

Out of curiosity many times I have my mind swirling around words.  Words fascinated me.  One example is “imagination”.  Human minds can imagine far and beyond.  Just think about how all things we live with in modern world compared to our ancestors, all innovations, wars, wonders, on this world and I admire how powerful human mind can be.  The mind can transform the imaginative to reality.  The mind can see things in its own analytical ways, can form its own perception of a person, has power to build, also to kill, to destroy, and power to heal.  Multiple aspects of the human imagination (HI) span from spirtual, to religious, to high-tech. HI => technologies => products that go (movies, music, architecture) far beyond any imagination. I admire those brains with such grandiose imaginations. To put together the science and engineering logics of their imaginations must require the artistic side of their brain (the right brain? perhaps). It is all about the work of the arts.
Seeing my little second cousin’s drawing and playfully palying piano without looking at the keyboard is just astounding.  We don’t want to underestimate any one, even a kid.

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